Optumhealth Honors "Forgotten" Mental Illness Patients, Recognizes Important Progress in Behavioral Health Care

OptumHealth Inc. is supporting a national memorial being built to honor people nationwide who died in state psychiatric hospitals and are buried in unnamed graves.

While noting the significant advancements in behavioral health care that today are helping millions find paths to recovery, OptumHealth unveiled a traveling fund-raising display for the memorial and presented a $50,000 donation. The announcement was made at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare conference.

Construction of The Gardens at Saint Elizabeth’s: A National Memorial of Recovered Dignity, is slated to begin in 2011 in Washington, D.C. OptumHealth's traveling display will be made available to national, state and local consumer mental health support organizations who wish to help raise awareness and funds at their locations and events.

"We are proud to support the national memorial because it honors the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and reminds us that today, early intervention and appropriate care can help people with mental illness live healthy and productive lives," said Andrew Sekel, Ph.D., executive vice president of OptumHealth Public Sector Solutions. "We hope the traveling display will help spread this important message across the country, while raising awareness and funds for a long-overdue memorial."

It's estimated that, through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, more than 300,000 people institutionalized with mental illness were buried in unnamed graves when they died. In recent years, thousands of graves and remains have been discovered across the United States, from Georgia to Oregon to Hawaii. Volunteers work every day to restore cemeteries on the grounds of psychiatric hospitals, returning dignity to those who have been forgotten.

The traveling display will provide educational materials and information about how people can get involved. Organizations can reserve the traveling display for their events at www.memorialofrecovereddignity.org. Individuals can also make a donation to the national memorial at the same Web site.

The Gardens at Saint Elizabeth’s will feature metal markers for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., that list state hospitals where patients are buried, and will include peaceful gardens, reflecting pools and a Weeping Wall. The memorial will be woven into an existing 10-acre cemetery, the resting place of about 4,500 psychiatric patients who died at Saint Elizabeth’s, including Civil War veterans. The memorial will be operated by people who are themselves recovering from mental illness.

OptumHealth serves more than 5 million public sector members in 38 states with programs that support recovery, resiliency and wellness for people facing behavioral health conditions, chronic illness or complex conditions such as transplants.